Dreaming Of Angels
by TizTiz
Summary: One year ago Edward sacrificed himself for the love of his young life, Bella. In the wake of death Bella spirals into a deep depression. Sometimes there are no obsticles too great.... even death itself. A/H well sort of , OOC, Angst/Supernatural/Romance


**Summary : **One year ago Edward sacrificed himself for the love of his young life, Bella. In the wake of death Bella spirals into a deep depression. Sometimes there are no obsticles too great.... even death itself. A/H well sort of , OOC, Angst/Supernatural/Romance

**Disclaimer : I don't own 'Twilight'.**

**Dreaming Of Angels**

**Chapter One - June 7th 2010**

**Bella**

The morning never ceases to be the hardest part of the day. For one miniscule heaven sent moment after I open my weary eyes and stretch out the kinks in my body, I forget, or at the very least fail to remember. Precious seconds tick past in which the hole within me, the one that feels as though it stretches from my eyes that once feasted upon him to the very tips of my toes, is blissfully absent. I do not savour those select few moments of peace because at that time I do not have the slightest inkling that I am not in fact whole, as the fresh crispness of the new morning would suggest. Less than a minute later I will become the girl that I have started to feel accustomed to over the last year: A pallid zombie, an empty shell, a halved soul. I just don't know it yet.

As is the custom, today it is my haggard appearence that brings the razor sharp memories rushing to the surface, as it does most days. Long gone is the flushed complexion of a girl that is loved and content, in its place is the hollow cheekbones and sickly skin of a soul tortured by loss, grief and a resulting forgetfulness where food and appetite is concerned. Changed are the sizable brown eyes that not so long ago (although it seems like an age) were brimming with love, passion and eagerness for life. Now my once pretty eyes are haunted by the ghosts of a past, which I still cling onto as though it is my present, and a lingering sadness.

I remember every last horrific detail and the pain slams into me like a ten ton delivery truck. At one point the pure agony of my remembrance would have overwhelmed to the extent that I would spend at least fifteen minutes snarling and sobbing into my recently vacated duvet. By now, however, I am stronger, or at least conditioned. At any rate I am conditioned enough to go about my daily routine (shower, brush teeth, pull on fresh skinny jeans, a hoodie and red Chuck Taylors, blow-dry hair) whilst the tides of grief erode me.

I have learned that the pain that results from lost love is impossible to push to back the back of your mind, where it can be dealt with at a more convenient time (for example a time when you have not been allotted with a mere thirty minutes to prepare for and arrive at school before the first bell). Unless you wish for the pain to engulf you at an extremely uncomfortable time, such as in the middle of second period English class due to unwise suppression, you must always allow it to linger in the forefront of your mind. Eventually it begins to co-exist harmoniously with the other human emotions you must feel in order to function to an acceptable extent.

I thrust my black and white 'Converse Allstars' back-pack over one shoulder and make it downstairs with five minutes to spare before pulling out of the driveway becomes an inevitability. My father, Charlie, is seated at the kitchen table with a bowl of Cornflakes and a glass of milk in front of him.

"Morning, Bells," my father's smile is strained, leaving me with no doubt that he mustered it from somewhere deep within himself.

"Morning, dad," I don't even bother with the unneccessary effort of returning his smile.

My father, is of the school of thought that one day I will emerge from my bedroom, chipper as the time when I never knew that pain such as this one was possible. He is not so patiently waiting for the morning when his rosy cheeked and bright-eyed daughter will return to him, delivered from the very depths of her own person Hell. My father is an optomist. I used to think that way too, back when school mornings meant that the boy I loved would be pulling into my drive-way at 8:30am sharp. Nowadays I am all too aware of the ways of this blood thirsty world and pessimism and I are bosom friends.

I pour myself a bowl of Cheerios and a cup of orange juice before pulling up a seat opposite dad. The extremely prominent silence brims with awkwardness. There was a never a time where easy conversation was my father and I's strong point but the silence was once comfortable and accepting, proof of two peaceful souls that shared the same gene pool. Today the quiet is strained and almost begging to be broken. All it will take to dissapitate the uncomfortableness of the situation is a few casual details of my pending day at Forks High or a precisely measured smile. Sadly, it's all too much effort. I am weary, my very bones seem to ache with grief, and one randomly thrown sentence seems like the equivalent of a trek up Mount Everest at the moment. So, the silence remains, a security blanket for myself and an impenetrable barrier for my father, until he finally takes in upon himself to break on through.

"So, how's school going, Bells?"

"Pretty good."

"Any idea where you are going next year?"

"I'm weighing my options."

"Any plans for tonight?"

"Not really. I thought I might just take a walk after school."

"Whereabouts to?"

"The cemetary, probably."

"Bella, this behaviour isn't healthy," dad sighs, frustration audible in every syllable.

Many years ago, when I was an infant and we still lived in New York City, my father was a CID officer in the police force. Sometimes when he's talking to me, I get the feeling that he wishes he could attack me with a hardcore interrogation, like he did with gangsters and rapists back in the day.

"I can't just forget him, dad," I say gently.

"I'm not asking you to forget. I'm asking you to live."

"Easier said than done," I whisper sadly.

"Why don't you have a girls night out? What about Jessica and Angela? What about that Mike boy? You used to enjoy their company. You can learn to be happy again, Bella."

"I was never happier than when I was with him. That doesn't change because he's gone," a tear slipped down my face.

I stand up, shoving my chair backwards with a little more force than was strictly necessary, the shame that stemmed from the tears making anger and frustration evident. No more words are said as I place my empty cereal bowl in the sink, pick up my bagpack once again and walk out of the front door. As I glance over my shoulder, back at my unmoving father, I fancy that for one second I see undeniable evidence of guilt etched onto his features. Perhaps it was guilt from pushing his stricken daughter too far, or maybe it stemmed from his obvious annoyance at my apparent inability to move on with my life. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the entire notion of the guilt was a result of my overreactive imagination. All I know is that in the moment I feel a stab of vindictive pleasure that he was suffering alongside me. The selfless and loving part of Bella Swan died as soon as love of her life's heart stopped beating.

***

I weave between the gravestones that inhabit Fork's cemetary with the ease of one who is truly at home. Throughout my childhood years the dead used to unnerve me and send me into fits of unease. Nowadays I long to join them. Ideas of suicide and leaving this joy forsaken life behind have become constants in my mind.

Surely by this point I must have paid my penance, for every meager sin that I have ever committed in my eighteen years on this Earth? Could there be any atonement more costly than watching the boy you love bleed to death before your very own eyes?

I want to join my love, to connect with the missing piece of my heart once more, but I am still strong enough to refuse to take my own life. Most days I long for a stray car to hit me, a rogue bullet to tear through my brain, a random lightening bolt to seek me out. Yet I still tether on the ledge of life, my soul and heart long dead but my body still alive. I have reached an equilibrium, a standstill. I have joined the ranks of the living dead, the zombies.

I no longer see each gravestone as hiding a ragged corpse but as potential companions of my beautiful boy, in Heaven. He, himself, was always firmly pitched in the atheist camp and dismissed the notion of God as you would scoff at three eyed monsters in your closet or seductive vampires in the basement. On the other hand, I looked at his face and knew that someone as glorious as he was not condemned to spending eternity among the maggots and dirt when death claimed him, I always knew that Heaven awaited him. I was just unaware of how impatient it was to snatch him.

Eventually I reach his resting place, sheltered under a blossoming apple tree, where the sun's rays cannot reach it. A fitting concept, if I ever heard one. He has only lay here for just shy of a year, yet the inscription is already faded due to Fork's neverending torrents of icy rain.

_**Edward Cullen (1992-2009)**_

_**Beloved son, brother and friend.**_

_**May he fly with the angels now.**_

I repress a whimper as I put down my usual offering of two cigarettes, taken from the packet in my jacket pocket. I then, sit cross-legged in front of my beloved's resting place, light up my own cigarette and inhale softly. Before he perished I had been a purist, a goody-two-shoes in some ways. A year ago a cigarette had yet to touch my lips, smoking had been Edward's forte as opposed to mine.

I could still see the alluring pucker of his lips as he would take a drag, an irrestible smirk upon his face. I could recall with perfect clarity, the way in which his impossibly long fingers would curl around the cigarrette while the other hand stayed twined around my fingertips. I may have disapproved of smoking as a whole but I was not blind enough to allow the pure desire that his smoking ignited in me to go unnoticed. In the end it was not the cigarettes that killed him, as I had secretely feared, it was something entirely different.

In the wake of his death I had sacrificed a lot of my former self in order to preserve a little of Edward. When I smoked I felt close to him, I could almost feel his breath on my face. It was for the same purposes that I had traded my beloved Nike trainers for the Chuck Taylors which he had harboured a preference towards and laughed my way through 'Family Guy' when I had felt more like crying. Sometimes I wondered if Edward would be able to recognise the girl that he had left behind.

After I finish my cigarette I lie back, propping myself up on my elbows. The slightly unkept grass may well be wet, but the beads of moisture barely register, my baggy hoodie protects my cold skin. This cemetary has become my place of refuge, the one location where Edward's presence is palpable.

Never had there been a moment when I had not felt at home when I was with Edward and now was no different. In my current state of mind it was only fitting that I felt at home amongst the dead.

**Edward**

As I'd always imagined, succumbing to death was certainly no picnic. The unbearable stench of my own blood, the obvious air of undiluted terror projecting from the onseers (being such a small town deaths on the street are not exactly common-place in Forks) and the stabbing pain in my abdomen did not exactly contribute to a fun time. In comparison to watching my beautiful girl slowly but surely destroy herself while I looked on helpless, an entire world away, however, dying was as reminscent of a daytrip to Coney Island.

Bella, was the love of my admittedly short life, so the secret sacrifice that I had made for her, the decision that dramatically reduced my life-span, had been relatively simple at the time. As long as I was still breathing, my girl would not be hunted down, nor would she ever live in fear due to circumstances beyond all of our control. I may have only been eighteen years old, but I was already firmly entrusted with the self-imposed position of being Bella's protector. The decision was easy, it turned out that the consequences of my actions were much harder to deal with.

If you'd asked prior to my death, I would have stated that I envisioned myself as being Bella's guardian angel in death. Actually to the tell the truth, I guess that being a relatively unreligious person, I did not actively believe in the existence of any form of afterlife. Faith and trust in God was always Bella's forte, as opposed to mine. Disregarding this setback, if anybody had asked me about a hypothetical death and a resulting hypothetical heaven, I would have seen myself as protecting Bella from Heaven, keep her safe and out of harm's way (if there had ever been a girl that was in dire need of a guardian angel, it was Bella. She was a danger magnet extraordinaire).

In reality my death, or more accurately what happened after my death, did not go at all according to plan. My corpse did not rot in the cemetary as I'd previously expected. Life after death did indeed exist, as did Heaven. However, if I was Bella's guardian angel, then it was safe to say that my diploma was about to be snatched away. As it turns out, living in Heaven, is an awful lot like watching an overly dramatic television program that you are almost unhealthy invested in. You can watch events unfold, you can follow the lives of your favourite characters, but you cannot alter the way their stories unfold.

I'd always been the rebel, the somewhat socially inept one in our relationship. My Bella, had been able to befriend absolutely anybody with no regard for their social status or reputation. She'd painstakingly mantained an unblemished academic portfolio and was notorious for being a hardcore purist (for the entirety of our relationship she'd refused to be corrupted by my constant flow of cigarettes and weed). Watching my girl now, it was as though she resembled my former self more than the girl I had been in awe of since freshmen year.

I mirror Bella's pose as she smokes beside my gravestood, propped back upon my elbows, Chuck Taylors spread out in front of me (when I arrived it was either wear the clothing I had arrived in or take a complimentary white stereotypical gown. I chose to avoid wearing anything with even the slightest hint of lace upon it). I feel close to her like this, as though I could slip my arm around her slender shoulders if I leaned forward far enough, rather than separated from her by a barrier of mortality and clouds.

I'd always shuddered at the thought of inhabiting a world in which Bella Swan did not exist, that had infact been driving force behind my sacrifice. Now, I had managed to subject myself, and her in turn, to just that. My own ineptness astonishes myself, even in death. I let out a distinctly unmasucline and unangelic whimper.

I bury my head in my jean covered knees, a universal sign of despair. When I finally lift my head, an angel straight that appears to have been plucked straight out of a canvas painting in a church is standing over me. I feel that it is necessary to state right now that despite the fact that I live among the dead, the self christened angels if you may, I do not resemble a supernatural in appearence. I am still Edward, with uncooperative bronze coloured hair and the much revered Chuck Taylors and baseball shirts. The being in front of me is the epitome of a Biblical angel, in a flowing gown and barefooted. I'm guessing that she took the gown option at the golden gates, then.

"Edward Cullen, angels should not be sad. It is the living that suffer, not those who live high among the clouds. Pray, tell what is bothering thee?" her voice was high and lilting, it almost conjured up the urge to break into song (well I suppose it would have done if I wasn't so damn tone death).

"Bella," I nod in the direction of the figure by the gravestone, figuring that as angels are supposed to be all-knowing and all that jazz that she'd get my drift.

"Oh, yes. The mortal girl. The air whispers of her fate."

Unfortunately in my current state of mind, the cryptic words did nothing but ignite irritation within me. I mean, I was an angel too and the air does not send 'whispers of fate' in my direction. Obviously I had not graduated to that level of complexity as of yet.

"Something must be done, Edward Cullen. You love her very much, yes?"

"Yes," finally we agree upon something.

"Perhaps her destiny is not set in stone. I see you love her very much. Your love for her calls to me. Maybe you have the power to do what has not been done in ten thousand years."

Naturally, I was dumbfounded. All I could think of at that moment, was that if Bella was here beside me she'd doubtlessly have been eagerley bobbing her head and desperately attempting to decipher the riddles that the angel was uttering.

"Before the tides of destiny can be unlocked, you must tell your story Edward Cullen."

"What story?"

"Your story, Edward Cullen. The story of yourself and Bella."


End file.
